


Aeonian

by Only_1_Truth



Series: Wings!AU [3]
Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: 00Q AND platonic adult!Bond and kid!Q, Established Relationship, Feels, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Q must be saved from his own inventions, Time Travel, Wings!AU, adult!Bond, cranky kid!Q has his reasons, kid!Q, tagging gets harder with each rule of space and time that I break, timeline is the author's plaything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 19:35:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6920263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Only_1_Truth/pseuds/Only_1_Truth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Aeonian: (adj.) eternal; everlasting</em> </p><p>The fact that Q had cracked the secrets of time-travel was actually not much of a surprise.  Q was the only thing more dangerous than a genius - a determined genius.  It made him a force of nature that went unmatched in the natural (and unnatural) world.  Perhaps, in light of this, it should also have been unsurprising that someone would try and steal this technology and gain control of the person smart enough to create it.  </p><p>And that was why Bond was now wearing largely untested time-traveling tech and preparing to go back in time to rescue his present-day lover.  He could only hope that Q's good opinion of him was eternal, because he'd been told that Q as a five-year-old was incredibly stroppy...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aeonian

**Author's Note:**

> I swore that I'd never write time-travel... but here I am XP In my defense, I've been dying to write some kid-Q ever since [Attack Dogs](http://archiveofourown.org/works/710074/chapters/1312445), and adding wings into the mix was too much to resist...
> 
> For anyone who isn't a bird-geek like I am, I've included a pic at the end of the fic that designates the various feathers that I heavily reference :) 
> 
> **Credit for the imbedded image, which is NOT mine: [Teresa Gierzyńska, “Obrażona”, 1991.](http://www.obieg.pl/recenzje/9197)

~^~

The fact that Q had cracked the secrets of time-travel was actually not much of a surprise.  Q was the only thing more dangerous than a genius - a determined genius.  It made him a force of nature that went unmatched in the natural (and unnatural) world.  Perhaps, in light of this, it should also have been unsurprising that someone would try and steal this technology and gain control of the person smart enough to create it.  

“Thanks to the work of 001, 005, and 006, the organization who stole my traveling technology has been neutralized,” Q reported, sitting as stiffly as a dark-haired King Arthur at the round table of the conference room.  The various ‘knights’ around said table had more sharp edges and fickle morals than the chivalrous ones of old, but they got the job done.  Wings shifted with a quiet susurrus of sound all around the table.

Q was probably more the metaphorical Merlin of the group, and the true king - true queen, in this case - spoke up with a stern but resigned addendum, “More accurately speaking, their efforts razed their enemies’ headquarters to the ground.”  M sighed and admitted, “However, considering the stakes, I cannot fault their actions.  If this technology were to fall into the wrong hands even for a second, the consequences would be more dire than I need elaborate.”

“Which is why we have a problem.”  As Q took up the narrative again, his wings gave a shudder and a twitch.  Despite how long he’d had his wings back for, it was common knowledge that Q still had very little control over them - the reason that those sitting to his left and right were carefully scooted as far away as possible was because the black and white appendages on Q’s back had a habit of snapping out or flapping without warning.  They had a life of their own.  Now, they were giving away the Quartermaster’s nervousness in small doses, while his face maintained a better control.  “008-” He nodded to the youngest face at the table, a relatively new addition to the double-oh ranks.  “-Was able to gather information indicating that we missed an enemy operative.”  Q’s mouth tipped downwards at the edges, more of his unease finally slipping onto his face.  Expressive eyes flicked around the table, meeting equally tense expressions.  “And 008’s reports indicate that this one enemy operative is in possession of an Aeon mechanism.”  

Everyone in the room seemed to flinch simultaneously, a shudder going through the room like a communal punch in the gut.  This was not what anyone had wanted to hear.  007, sitting bravely at Q’s left wing, groaned and dropped his face into the palm of one hand.  He’d barely managed to come to grips with Q’s personal powers, much less the creation of time-travel - attempting to comprehend the repercussions of a terrorist holding that in the palm of their hands was beyond him.  

“But we at least destroyed the organization, right?” 004, who’d been promoted to second-greenest 00-agent after the appointment of the new 008, asked, “So this operative has no backing, no one to stand with.”

“And we’ve got 006’s team working to make sure that it stays that way,” M assured.  “This operative is going to be without a country, without a home, and without allies.”

“Which would be awesome-”  All eyes turned to 008, who only then seemed to realize that he’d interrupted the head of MI6.  His wings - notably stunted for his body-size, their rust-and-white edges ruffled - twitched in closer to his back and he had the good grace to flush to his ears.  However, a wary glance in M’s direction earned him a stately nod to continue, and the youngest Angel finished, “-If this operative didn’t have stolen time-traveling tech.  So while she might be flat out of luck in this time, she’s got the ability to jump to another.”

There was painfully completely silence, before 003 summed things up nicely, “Well _fuck_.”

“It gets worse-” 008 took evident joy in adding, lifting a finger as if to illuminate the part he was getting to and leaning forward on the table.  Turnabout was fair play, however, and before the youngest Angel could finish, he in turn was interrupted by the Quartermaster.  

Q looked tired.  Worn around the edges like he’d become suddenly sick, and although his tone held its usual, dryly professional note, it rang hollow as he said, “This operative is going after _me_.  Or, more accurately, after my younger self.  Before my training and employment at MI6, I was decidedly more vulnerable.”  While everyone (except M and 008, the former having already been briefed by the latter) tried to weather the shock of this information, Q sat back, pulling his glasses off to rub at his eyes.  He could hear feathers rustling all around the table, quiet mutters reaching the edges of his hearing.  Q dropped his hand when he felt something brush his port wing, however, and saw ash-and-shadow feathers plucking gently at his long, white-tipped primaries.  James, ever the silent one, keeping his own counsel behind the vaults of his steady blue eyes, was watching him with a steadiness that spoke of trust and reassurance.  

Needing no more than that tiny nudge (both physical and metaphorical), Q slipped his glasses back on and straightened.  His wing disengaged from Bond’s of its own accord, flexing before tightening back in like a stubborn fist.  “Fortunately, thanks to 008’s good work, we know the exact date in which this attack on my younger self is to take place, and since I appear to still be here-”  Q slanted a wry, humorless smile, and a few of the more hardened agents relaxed at the grim joke.  “-Then we have time to send back an agent of our own.”

“And I’ve already volunteered,” 007 said with the smooth certainty of a knife-blade.  

The vicious argument that followed between the Quartermaster and MI6’s best indicated that he most certainly had not.

~^~

The argument died quickly, largely because M supported Bond’s choice, and in fact admitted that she had planned to choose him herself.  She pointed out that Bond knew Q best.  The Quartermaster, of course, had argued that he was a lot different now than he had been then - especially since ‘then’ proved to be back when Q was five years of age.  “I’ve been told by multiple reputable sources that I was particularly stroppy at that age,” Q informed everyone stiffly, the fine tremor in his wings showing just how frustrated he was but fighting to contain it.  

M hadn’t so much as twitched, counter-arguing that mission assignments did not fall under Q’s purview, and therefore the decision was hers.  After that, everyone had been dismissed, but Q and James had lingered.  With no one else around to watch, Q’s anger had collapsed, showing that the root of his entire outburst was fear.  Time-travel, after all, was largely untested, to say nothing of the danger 007 would face when he reached his destination in time and was pitted against a desperate enemy operative.  

“I’ll be fine, Q,” James assured.  They were words he rarely had to give his Quartermaster, either because Q knew full well what Bond’s job entailed or because it had long since become an unspoken promise.  

It was also a fickle promise, one that James was well-equipped to keep but still no more solid than a silver thread.  Q’s eyes said that as he looked up from his lap where his hands were fisted as if he wanted dearly to wrap them around Bond’s neck and shake some sense into him.  But he didn’t argue.  They’d already been over everything, and it was decided that Bond was going to trust his life to Q’s most outrageous gadget yet - just as Q was going to put his life and nearly his entire past into James’s hands.

“I really was a little shit at age five,” Q said instead.  When the man next to him flashed a surprised smirk, Q let a strained but sincere smile tug up one corner of his mouth, too, adding, “For the life of me, I can’t recall why, but age five was a particularly terrible time to be around me - so be forewarned.”  Q paused, took in the charming, smiling face with its tanned skin, artfully tousled hair, and knowing blue eyes, and then reached out a hand to grip Bond’s callused fingers under it.  

“Be careful and _come back to me_.”

“Just think of it as my never leaving,” James suggested, refusing to admit his own fear as it crawled beneath his skin like an electric charge - less a fear of being tossed backwards in time and more a fear of losing his Quartermaster.  This timeline was exactly the way he liked it, and the thought of someone tearing it apart at its beginning set a furious flame to burning in his heart.  Turning his hand to wrap it around Q’s slender digits in turn, squeezing firmly, James smiled confidently and finished, “I’m just visiting you in a different _when_.”

~^~

The Aeon mechanism was surprisingly compact, but still looked like a metal bracer from an old gladiator movie.  It coated 007’s forearm from wrist to elbow, but was mostly hidden beneath the black pullover he tugged on.  A jacket went over that.  Bond had decided to forego his usual bespoke attire in favor of something more serviceable.  Blending in was out of the question - in dark alleys and shadowy places, 007’s wings could just about disappear into the background, but he wasn’t going to count on that.  Fortunately, Angels were rare but not unheard of in the UK, so he’d weather the few stares he got and keep in mind that his target would be on the lookout regardless.  

008 had given him a description of his prey.  The newest 00-agent could be a handful at times, and there were still people in MI6 who took one look at his stunted, flightless wings and discounted him, but Bond remembered when Q had had no wings at all - and had still managed to not only become Quartermaster of MI6 but master other powers that no other Angel but Raoul Silva had ever possessed.  In this case, 008 had gotten more information than anyone could have honestly hoped for, and James knew that he was looking for a woman in her late thirties, green eyes, long brown hair, curly, and fit enough that she probably was trained for fighting.  They’d already found the name to go with the face: Elisa Burming.  

Right now, that was the only name on James’s kill list.  

Just as five-year-old Quincy Fraser-Smith was the only asset on Bond’s mind.  

Just as 008 had let James in on what he knew, Q shared other bits of information that would be needed - such as where he and his parents, Lewellyn and John Fraser-Smith, had lived at that time, the fact that neither of Q’s parents had been winged Angels, but that his paternal grandfather had.  However, at age five, Q had only seen his grandfather twice on account of their part of the family being estranged, and the old man died before he could think to reestablish contact later.  It would be a few years more before Q would actually associate with any other Angels.  Other little facts were added in, like the agency that his parents often called to hire a nanny for him, and the handful of friends he had.  There was nothing particularly surprising, and Q had shrugged, smiled wanly, and said, “Were you hoping to go back in time to the middle of an action movie, 007?  I was five, and either bored or ill-tempered by turns, and my house had an _actual_ picket fence.”

008 had snickered from across the room, eavesdropping shamelessly like he’d done even before his training.  Lounging against the wall next to him with all of the serpentine grace of the snake in Eden, 002 buffeted his younger comrade with a wing without even blinking.  

And then there was nothing to do but dive right into danger.  

The last thing Bond saw before the Aeon mechanism was activated around his right wrist was Q looking at him from behind his computer, glasses reflecting the screen he was working on but eyes reflecting a fond sort of worry that was as familiar as the back of Bond’s hand.  “Do try and be careful, 007,” Q said, professionalism doing nothing to hide how much he meant those words.

Bond cracked a smile, winked, and said, “Always do, Q,” before the world dissolved around him and the past beckoned.  

~^~

Time-travel was no picnic.  

Bond had been warned that all test runs had shown no bodily or mental damage to the subjects involved, but had generally lead to massive upsets of milder kinds - like nausea, dizziness, or even blurred vision and migraines.  Upon arriving in 1985, James promptly threw up everything that he had ever eaten and possibly some things he’d only considered eating.  He counted himself lucky and moved on as soon as his stomach stopped rebelling, and only when that sensation faded did he notice the dizziness, too - which thankfully also faded, leaving one slightly pale and shaky, but otherwise healthy, 00-agent in its wake.  

Q had warned him that the timing might not be exact - he’d narrowed it down as much as he could, but dropping Bond off too early would give him more time to badly muck-up the timeline and too late would obviously be, well, too late.  Q had also stressed that the further back one went, the harder it was on the body, and they were already pushing it.  Presently, James didn’t feel too bad off (he’d certainly had missions or, hell, even drinking binges that had left him feeling worse), but he trusted Q’s judgment and that some injuries could be like monsters lying in wait.  So, essentially, Q’s Aeon mechanism was trying to land James on the head of a pin: not too early, not too late, but hopefully still early enough to get the jump on Elisa Burming before she could kill (or co-opt) a very young, impressionable, and vulnerable Quince Fraser-Smith.  

The first thing Bond did was find a phone and call the Fraser-Smith resident.  Sometimes the direct approach was best - he wouldn’t tell them that their son was being targeted by a desperate time-traveling assassin, of course, but 007 could think of a hundred lies that would put them on the alert for danger nevertheless.  

Actually, the first thing Bond did was realize that all of the tech on his person was fried, _including_ his mobile.  Then, after moodily cursing the Aeon (which was still in perfect working order at last),  he went and found himself a serviceable payphone.  

When there was no answer, Bond felt every muscle in his body tighten, alarm bells going off in his head.  Wings mantling around him, James hung up just as he reached the recorded voice of Lewellyn Fraser-Smith on the answering machine, and immediately started running through plans and scenarios in his head.  Ignoring the few people who were staring openly at his wings (thankfully, it was too early in the day for many people to be around), James stepped out into the street.  He wasn’t just being reckless with vehicles, however - he needed room.  Those folks fortunate enough to be awake at this early hour got to see a sixteen-foot wingspan spread like a storm, the tapered flight-feathers seeming almost to soak in the trailing remnants of the night.  

One beat, two, and a powerful kick freed James from the gravity that trapped most men, and for the first time in either an hour or over three decades, Agent 007 took to the sky.

And hunted like the hawk he was.

~^~

Q’s old house did indeed have a white picket fence, and sat pretty as a picture in a wealthy part of town with real gardens and even a tree or two.  Landing a block away and loping closer, James wasted no time with the doorbell as he noticed the Fraser-Smith car (its make and model pulled from Q’s eidetic memory with ridiculous ease) absent, but another vehicle parked outside.  It took only a glance to see that it was hotwired.  Not caring at this point if anyone saw him, James vaulted the fence with a quick flair of wings catching the air under him, coming up to the front door only to find it unlocked.  

 _‘No_.’  The word echoed in his head, devoid of feeling right now because James wasn’t letting himself feel anything - no fear, no devastation, no panic.  But the word repeated nonetheless like a soulless cry in the back of his mind, ‘ _No no no no no.  Q, you have to be alive_ …’  It took a second for James to recall the trick that all Angels had, and that he’d perfected in particular: all Angels had internal energy like a storm, and it could be detected and even tracked by other Angels.  

And inside the house, James could detect a tiny, tiny, flickering flame of Angel energy like a coal glowing.  Now James just had to hope that that coal didn’t get snuffed out before he could find the the person that energy belonged to.  

Training died hard, thankfully, so even as urgency took hold of Bond’s limbs, he moved silently on the pads of his feet, wings tight to his back and unconsciously swaying so that not a single feather brushed things as he passed: a vase full of garish flowers, fresh but running low on water - a coatrack populated by coats of three sizes, feminine, adult male, and the small coat of a child - a quaint array of framed photographs, revealing what could only be Q and his parents.  James couldn’t help but spare an extra second to glance at the picture, eyes moving of their own accord to the elfin-featured face at the center of the picture.  The two adults barely registered as Bond got a look at a face that could only be Q’s, but taken recently in _this_ time-period.  

Just as Bond recognized the face with the reversal of so many years, he immediately recognized the voice when his attention was snagged by a brief exchange, coming from deeper inside the house.  A woman spoke first, impatience tinging her tone, “Come on now, Quince.  I’m supposed to be watching you, remember?”

“You’re entirely capable of watching me from inside the house.  I have no interest in going to the park,” was the clipped answer, and Bond found himself smiling in immediate relief - because even if the pitch was higher and much changed, the posh diction was all Q.  Somehow, it wasn’t surprising that Bond’s Quartermaster had _always_ talked like a British Vulcan.  

The arguing continued, and it took only a few sentences more for Bond to assume that the woman talking to Q was posing as his nanny but was most definitely Miss Burming.  Drawing his gun silently and keeping his wings back to make a smaller target of himself (Bond had learned to always prepare for returned fire), 007 moved forward more swiftly, echolocating his way through the house’s many rooms.  As the argument between Q and his not-nanny got more heated (clearly the kid was savvy even at five years old, because distrust was positively rolling off his words), Bond picked up his pace until he was almost running, and he still only made it to the corner when he heard a sharp _bang!_

It took only a millisecond for Bond’s brain to catch up with his ears and analyze the sound as that of a door slamming, not a gunshot, especially since that little flicker of Angel energy was still brushing the edges of his senses.  The agent’s sigh of relief was hidden by the cacophony of Miss Burming giving up on her facade and instead screaming, “You get your fucking arse out of that bathroom right now, you little brat, or I’m coming in after you!”

“Oh, I don’t think you are,” 007 mused aloud as he turned the corner, and was met by startled green eyes and a nest of curly brown hair as Elisa Burming spun around at the sound of his voice.  She’d been pulling a pistol out from underneath her jacket, but she never got a chance to raise it either against Bond or the kid on the other side of the closed door.  

One shot rang was all it took, Bond’s silencer muffling it to a single, almost poetic whine in the air.  Only then did he realized that he’d had a knot of tension as painful as a heart-attack in his chest, and only now was it unraveling as he watched Elisa Burming - the last threat to Q, at least in this time period - crumpling to the floor like a surprised, unstrung puppet.  Her eyes were staring at the ceiling, and she only sucked in a few more airless breaths before the bullet in her chest sealed her fate.  Bond approached with caution nonetheless, noting her sightless eyes, the blood spreading across the blouse that she’d likely stolen to complete her cover.  The most important thing he noticed was the Aeon mechanism, wrapped around her right forearm like a slimmer copy of his, visible where her sleeve had ridden up.  

James carefully removed the device, which folded up like chainmail in his hands, each link so tiny and yet so intricate that it looked like metal cloth but held the power to warp time itself.  He’d have to contact the MI6 of _this_ time and request a clean-up before Mr. and Mrs. Fraser-Smith came home to a body in their house, but he’d at least removed the cause of this whole debacle.  The Aeon mechanism went into an inside pocket of his jacket, zipped snugly closed.   

James had priorities right now, though, and when he heard the sounds of a window being forced open from beyond the locked door, he dismissed the dead assassin from his mind and focused on Q instead.  He briefly considered kicking down the door, but decided to save time instead by ducking into the next room, forcing its window open, and leaping easily out of the second-story window to glide to the ground below.  His broad wings caught the air, slowing him, so he landed with barely a rustle in the back garden.  Glancing up, he found that he was in good time - Q, being smaller than James remembered him by quite a lot, was struggling with the window, and had only just managed to push it up, seeming to be unaware of the Angel already waiting for him in the garden below.  

With the immediate danger neutralized, James should have been rushing to get back to his native time again, but instead…  Instead, he found himself watching as skinny little arms pushed the window open a little more, and a tousled, achingly familiar-yet-not head popped into view.  James had already slipped into the shadows beneath the nearest tree, watching silently as the rest of Q came into view when he stepped up onto the windowsill and looked down.  

Q was just a little mite at age five, and suddenly the dimness of the energy James was sensing wasn’t so unsettling: winged kids were hardly the powerhouses that adults were.  Superhuman speed and strength came with the territory, but at this age, Q wouldn’t have much more than a whisper of that, definitely not enough to make any difference again an assassin like Burming.  

The dark-purple sweater Q was wearing seemed almost to swallow him, the sleeves either sliding down over his delicate hands or riding up to his elbows when he raised his arms, and he looked like he could have slithered right out of the neck-hole.  Standing, he’d probably reach Bond’s elbow, although his riot of dark hair was a sentient entity all on its own even before a light breeze rolled past and plucked at it, and added a good few inches to his meagre height.  His hazel eyes looked huge on his almost elfish face, glasses rimming them even at this age.  God, Q had been adorable as a child… _was_ adorable.  When James looked past Q’s waifish little body to his wings, the agent almost gave away his position by laughing, because he remembered with a jolt that Angels weren’t always sleek-feathered raptors - Q, at age five, was still in possession of his fledgling wings , all covered in down, the barbs of flight-feathers pushing past the fluff to create an awkward, incongruous, and absolutely hilarious image.  

Even with his adult feathers slowly coming in, Q was in no way capable of even the shortest of flights, which had James go from amused to worried as he saw Q purse his lips in determination and spread his fluffy wings to their fullest extension.  

Somewhere in the back of Bond’s head, there was a running lecture about breaking the space-time-continuum or some-such physics-babble.  For the second time that day, 007 ignored that speech, and instead raised his voice to call up in his laziest of of drawls, “If you plan to glide down, you’re going to have a rather abrupt moment when you realize you _can’t_.”

Hazel eyes snapped so sharply in his direction that James may as well have been holding a neon sign, and baby-wings gave a startled jerk.  Apparently Q had been a quick, alert sort of person even as a child, either following the sound of Bond’s voice or realizing that he could detect something burning at Bond’s core that couldn’t be described by normal, human senses.  

Child-Q was also just as cranky as adult-Q had warned, if the immediate, thunderous frown was any evidence.  “What do you know?” the child snapped at him, dragging his wings back in as if embarrassed to be caught.

Realizing that his own wings were still out of sight even if the rest of him apparently wasn’t, James folded his arms and took a slow step forward, not so much making conscious decisions as reacting.  He’d learned long ago to trust his instincts on missions, and right now, his instincts had him interacting with his Quartermaster’s younger self instead of clearing the area before he was seen.  

Even the tiny increase in nearness had Q’s fluffy little appendages widening - the reflexive, defensive posture of a great-horned-owl chick making itself look bigger - but then the boy’s eyes widened as smoke-grey wings hove into view, the tree’s shade sliding off them like a gentle touch.  

“Take it from someone who’s got all of his feathers already in,” James picked as his answer, tone carefully mild and posture unthreatening.

The hunger for knowledge in Q’s eyes was more naked at this age, when later he’d learn to hide things about himself.  Bond had to remember that at this point in his life, Q hadn’t seen many Angels like himself, and wouldn’t for a year or two yet.  Aware of this, and hoping to earn a few brownie-points in the boy’s eyes, James slowly spread his wings out to their full extension.  The steadily growing morning light picked out the dove-grey highlights dappled through the darker shades, and James watched as Q stared unblinkingly and seemed to almost relax.  “How about I help you down from there?” Bond offered in a tone carefully modulated to be calming.  

The suspicion came back, reminding Bond that Q was not only unfamiliar with (and achingly curious about) his own kind, but also a canny little sod - canny enough that he hadn’t trusted Elisa Burming.  Down-patched wings flared again, their budding primaries brushing the window-edges.  “How do I know you’re not with that lady?” he demanded, but didn’t leave his perch to either retreat or make a jump for it.  

Wings refolding lazily, James shrugged, “I’m not lying about being your nanny, for one.”

One little eyebrow arched, disappearing under curls of dark hair.  Q’s tone was less suspicious but more snarky as he noted, “Good, because you look even less like a nanny than she does.”

‘ _You little brat_ ,’ James thought to himself even as he fought a smile, seeing the fearless quality that would make Q a force to be reckoned with as he got older.  Aloud, he spoke with more tact, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” the boy maintained.  

Even with years of experience as a spy, learning what lies to tell and what truths to hoard, James was struggling with what to say.  He could just about hear his Q yelling at him from decades in the future, about how he was fucking up the timeline, but there may as well have been puppet-strings on Bond, because he continue the conversation as if he couldn’t help himself, “I’m the man who kept you from being kidnapped-”   _‘Killed_.’ “-Just a minute ago.  Does that earn me any points?”

Q seemed on the fence about that, but his eyes kept wandering to Bond’s wings, tracing the aerodynamic lines and smoothly layered feathers.  It didn’t take much thought to realize that this curiosity was a big part of what kept Q from running this very second, writing Bond off as another stranger for children to be wary of.  

Wanting to tip the odds more in his favor, seeing an opening and going for it because that was how he’d been trained, 007 went on encouragingly, “That woman stole a car and I noticed, so I knew that something was wrong even before I followed her in and heard what she was saying to you.  I want to keep you safe, Q.”

The ‘Q’ had slipped out involuntarily, and James cursed himself silently an instant later.   _‘Damn_.’  He was usually better than this; usually, however, he hadn’t been dragged back in time so hard and fast that his stomach upended itself.  Admittedly, he was still a bit off his game.  Q immediately stopped eyeing his wings to look him in the face, ears metaphorically pricking up at the alphabet letter… but instead of growing tenfold more wary and suspicious, the kid seemed to relax.  

“Only my parents call me that.”

“I know them,” Bond lied out of reflex, then softened the lie with a half-truth, “And I know you a little.”

Calming unexpectedly to the point of actually sitting down on the windowsill, young-Q cocked his head, pressing his lips together for a moment before asking, “You stopped that woman, didn’t you?”

James tensed the muscles of his back to keep his wings from twitching, the quiet question striking close to the bloody truth that still lay inside the house.  Still, he answered, low and even, “Yes.”

“And since you want to help me out the window… that means I shouldn’t go out into the hallway.”

‘ _Damn you, Q, for being so smart even at the age of five_.’  This time, James dodged the question, because no matter how many films Q had seen or stories he’d heard, he didn’t need to hear about the very real death lurking just a few meters from him.  “How about I fly up there to you?”  Bond added a bit of joviality to his voice, showing open palms as if this offer were an invisible present.  “Would you stay on the windowsill?”

Q cocked his head the other way now, dark curls tumbling and falling across his head, brushing against the rims of his glasses.  For a moment, James thought that Q would finally run, but instead, the boy tucked his knees up against his chest and wrapped his arms around them - a wordless _‘yes’_ that made 007 sigh in relief.  The boy answered with a little quiver of his hopelessly downy wings, “Okay.  I guess that I’d rather go with a kidnapper with wings than a nanny without them.”  Q’s priorities were seriously screwed up, but James was grateful that he was at least including James in a positive category.  “Plus, that woman kept talking to me like I was a baby, but you actually talk to me.”

That sounded more like the Q Bond knew - condescending to the Quartermaster never ended well.  James stepped a bit further forward and limbered up his wings again, carefully calculating how to get up to where Q was without accidentally buffeting the kid.  He still didn't know why he was doing this instead of going straight back to his own time-period, but made the excuse of still being ‘travel sick’ and therefore wanting to catch his breath a bit more in this time before braving the return journey.  “Well, I figure that you’re a smart kid,” James returned magnanimously, which was entirely the truth.

Q seemed to know it, and perked up just a tiny bit.  He almost smiled, in fact.  “I am.”  But then he looked at Bond’s wings again, and his brows drew together in an expression that the agent could read like a book: ‘ _I_ am _smart, but I don't know anything about_ those, _and it’s driving me crazy_.’

Realizing that he’d either become Q’s instant friend by calling him ‘Q’ or simply by being an Angel like him, James chuffed a quiet laugh and then beat his wings downwards, twice lightly - rustling the grass, watching as Q’s eyes widened and his little body stilled - then harder, lifting off suddenly with a surge of strength.  He’d long-since gotten used to the ground falling away beneath his feet, and his stomach barely lurched at the sudden rise in altitude, but Q was clearly less familiar: his eyes had gotten as huge as saucers on his face, and he looked like he might fall backward into the loo simply from frozen shock.  James somehow managed to land with his feet braced on the sill and his hands gripping the window-frame, wings rasping against the siding of the house before coming to rest in a locked, outspread position like artificial night all around them.  Bond had landed in tighter spots, but he still sucked in a breath and tensed for a moment before his balance steadied and he accepted that he wasn’t about to fall backwards.  

Looking down to where Q was still sitting next to his right shoe, Bond was met with awe-glazed eyes beneath a head of hair tousled by the wind he’d whipped up.  Bond felt a ridiculous urge to preen at the attention, before the feeling was replaced by a throb of pain in his chest as he realized how much Q had been missing this - missing another Angel, someone _like him_.  Back in Bond’s own time period, Q hadn’t mentioned any childhood loneliness or bullying based on his singular, winged status, but adult-Q wasn’t particularly good at showing his soft underbelly even to James (not without significant incentive or prompting).  

That sealed the decision in Bond’s mind: he’d leave for his time period later, after spending a bit of time with his young Quartermaster, time paradoxes be damned.  

“If you let me, I’ll take you to the ground,” Bond offered, watching keenly for signs that the kid’s good mood was waning.  He’d seen a good glimpse of that crankiness the Quartermaster had mentioned, and wasn’t keen on receiving more of it.  

Big hazel eyes snapped up to his, still too shocked to be ill-tempered - or afraid, it seemed, because Q responded as if James were a family friend instead of an Angel he’d known all of three minutes, “You mean _fly_?”

Bond couldn’t help the upward quirk of his mouth at Q’s awed, disbelieving tone.  “Obviously.  I could probably jump to the ground, but that would be a waste of good wings now, wouldn’t it?”  He twitched his dark-tipped primaries as if to make his point, not mentioning that Q’s durability was decidedly less than his own, and an abrupt landing might hurt him.

The little head nodded hurriedly in agreement, still craned back to look at the mass of feathers that filled his vision - at least the kid wasn’t thinking about the dead fake nanny in the hall anymore.  When it looked like Q would stare indefinitely, James made a face, shifted his weight so that he could balance with one hand free, and then used that free hand to reach down slowly.  Young-Q twitched a little, eyes snapping to the hand and his face scrunching up as if he wasn’t sure whether he should bite it or not (another glimpse at that stroppy temperament James had been warned about), but ultimately allowed Bond to grip his arm and pull him upright.  The agent was careful to keep his grip loose, lifting but hopefully not triggering belated self-preservation instincts by trapping the kid in any way.  The kid came to his feet willingly enough, and stood with a staunchly expectant look on his face until James had to smirk again.  

“I’ll hold onto you and you’ll hold onto me, and we’ll be on the ground with no trouble.  Deal?” James posed the question, recalling that neither his Q nor this younger version had liked being talked down to, and modulated his tone accordingly.  

A small shudder of Q’s downy wings was the only sign of unease he showed, and if anything, he seemed eager.  Then again, he’d been on the verge of jumping out a window, so clearly his sense of danger was a bit… skewed.  James mollified himself with the thought that at least for now, he was there to balance that out with his own determination not to let a single ill befall him.  So Q could be as fearless as he wanted, at least until James had to return to his own time period and couldn’t play guard-dog anymore.  “You’ll be able to fly with my added weight?” Q posed the question, tousled head cocking to one side again, making him look like a curious baby bird.  

“Easily,” James replied.  Still gripping the raised window with one hand to maintain his perch, James lowered his weight until he was crouching and could hook an arm around Q’s middle.  The boy felt so fragile, and a feeling of intense protectiveness rolled through Bond’s chest like a physical growl and shuddered down his spine hard enough to make his broad wings flex.  Q’s eyes were so glued to the movement that he barely hummed to show that he’d heard, and absentmindedly put his arm around James’s neck.  

Unused to the feeling of such little fingers trickling the back of his neck, James craned his own head to see Q’s distracted face in profile, and queried, “Ready?”

He got a nod in response.  Not trusting Q to hold on when he was so clearly mesmerized by all that James _was_ , the agent sighed, shook his head with a fond smile, and tightened his arm beneath Q’s wings before pushing back hard from the window to give himself some room to _move_.

Gravity was a powerful force and a second-story window was really not that far from the ground - but MI6-trained Angels were wildly powerful, and James knew how to use the skills he’d been both trained in and born with.  He gave himself as much upward velocity as backward, and was sweeping his wings through the air even before he’d given himself enough room, flight-feathers scraping the side of the house like supple scythes.  Q gasped against his neck and immediately proved that he could cling damn well if he wanted to, but to be safe, James wrapped his other arm in close, too, able to feel the brittle shape of Q’s growing feathers through his jacket and under his spread hand.  The first few beats of Bond’s wings managed to hold them at an unsteady hover, and the next two beat the air less strongly but more swiftly, plying the air like great fans until Bond and Q’s weight was lowered softly to the ground.  

By this point, Q may as well have been painted onto James’s chest, he was holding on so tightly.  For a moment, 007 feared that he’d scared the living daylight out of the child - since this had to be the first time Q had ever flown - until he thought he heard a softly exhaled, “Wow,” fall reverently on Q’s next breath.  It was barely a squeak.

~^~

Bond set Q down, not wanting to test just how long the kid would endure such close contact with a person he didn’t know.  He needn’t have worried: as soon as Q’s feet hit the ground, he was shifting from foot to foot like an eager ferret, veritably dancing as he split his attention between Bond’s right wind and his left.  Bond had to put his chin right to his chest to look down at the excited boy, and it was painfully obvious how much Q wanted to ask a million question but didn’t know how to start or if he could.  

“You’re an Angel, too,” was all the kid finally said, stating the obvious in a breathy tone of disbelieving awe.  His own, fledgling wings spread out again, clumsy and excited, and James took a closer look at them in the growing light.  Seeing the interspersed fluff and new feathers, he was beginning to form a hypothesis regarding why five-year-old Q was remembered as such a cranky little sod.  One’s first molt was always an irksome experience.  Q probably itched like hell.

Putting his theories aside for a moment, James gave his wings a gentle stretch, resisting the natural urge to tuck them against his back, because Q clearly wanted to keep looking at them.  Bond half feared that the boy would cry if he folded them away, a gesture that would seem like James didn’t want to share them.  “It should be rather obvious,” he dared to tease, and was rewarded by an immediate return to grumpiness as a fierce frown was directed upwards at him.  When Q folded his arms he looked about as foreboding as a five-year-old could get, although he also looked back at his own wings and grimaced as if not believing that they’d ever be anything but small and downy.

Once again feeling the puppet-strings of bad impulses tugging him, James found himself asking, “Would you care to go for a walk with me?” instead of just making his excuses and leaving.

~^~

Bond ended up calling MI6, managing to use codes provided by M that would get him a clean-up team without having to somehow verify that he was 007 _from the future_.  It also allowed him to be brief, succinct, and vague enough that the child next to him didn’t know that there was a body to be cleaned up at his house before he returned.  Q had come quite willingly, with the promise that James would bring him back before his parents got back - which was sometime tonight.  They were on a business trip.  

So far, the unofficial cover-story was that Bond was Q’s uncle, an identity that had been thrust upon him as people made assumptions on sight.  Q’s clear ease in James’s presence did a fabulous job of turning any distrustful stares into warm smiles and even coos - despite the fact that Q’s mood was souring, and by the time James was finished on the phone, he had a glowering five-year-old fidgeting against his leg.  “If you keep glaring like that, you face will stick that way,” James looked down to inform Q, holding back a smirk only thanks to years of practice.  

Q’s head tipped back and that glare was fixed on Bond.  “No it won’t.  That’s a fallacy that parents maintain, but I looked it up, and it’s not based on any fact,” he argued tartly, his pink little mouth turning down even more sharply at the edges.  His wings gave a sharp twitch, and a few bits of down fell off, revealing a few more feather-shafts that were budding.  

“Fine then,” James shamelessly changed tack.  He spread his nearest wing around Q like a stiff-feathered cloak as he said, “If you don’t stop making that face, you’ll start turning people to stone like some sort of mythological Gorgon.   _And_ people might start thinking that you don’t want to be gallivanting around with me.”

Being called a Gorgon affected Q less than the idea of being separated from arguably the first Angel he’d seen in years, and he glanced down guiltily for a second before trying to smooth out his expression.  He went from massively moody to mildly miffed, but his wings kept shifting and shuffling like tatty little pillows after a pillow-fight, sporadically spilling down.  “Fine,” he grumbled, and still without looking at James, reached out to startle the agent by slipping small fingers across his palm.  While still acting perfectly aloof, pretending to stare past James’s primaries to the streets beyond, Q kept his grip on Bond’s hand while requesting, “Could we go to the park?  There are fewer people who stare at me in the park.”

Very, very carefully flexing his hand, testing Q’s remarkably determined grip before gently closing his own fist around it - watching the boy’s hand practically disappear - James replied absently, “People stare most at what they envy.  They know that your wings will be a sight to behold someday, and are hoping to get a glimpse in now while they can.”  That got Q’s eyes to flash back to him, surprise and wariness fighting with hesitant pleasure at the idea.  James smiled back even as his heart twisted in his chest.  “Fine.  The park it is.”

The park wasn’t far, but it was still enough of a jaunt that James chose the discomfort of cramming into a cab over wearing out Q’s short legs prematurely.  The brat actually seemed quite amused at the sight of James contorting his wings to get them into the tight space, an act that got easier with practice but never more comfortable - so it was the elder Angel who was glowering by the time they pulled away from the curb.  Q swished his legs back and forth over the edge of the seat and kept inching his left hand nonchalantly closer and closer to Bond’s nearest wing, which was spilling soot-grey feathers across the seat.

Q still hadn’t gotten up the gumption to actually grab any feathers by the time they got out again, and his own failed bravery was probably half the reason for the boy’s pout as they stepped along the path and deeper into the well-groomed miniature forest around them.  Finally deciding that there was no use in just waiting Q out, James rolled his eyes skyward before looking back down to murmur, “You can touch them, you know.”

Once again those quick hazel eyes snapped up behind thick lenses, startled and embarrassed to be caught out, but also with about a thousand other burgeoning emotions - more than James had thought a child should have been able to contain, but all Q’s fingers did was twitch.  Then Q fisted his little hands and pulled them behind his back, strutting forward like a little prince.  “That would be rude,” he maintained, although he had to call it back over his shoulder.

Maintaining an easy distance just a pace behind, James smirked at the streak of professionalism that had apparently been bred into Q from birth, and then did his best to unravel it a little, “Really?  Even if I give you permission?”

“Yes.”

“Did someone tell you that or did you decide that all on your own?”

Q directed a gimlet look back at James now, but deigned to answer with an arch little sniff, “It can’t be polite to touch other people’s wings - it just can’t.  No one touches mine.”

“Now, that’s just a travesty,” James drawled, maintaining his bland expression while keeping a close watch on Q’s face in return.  As expected, he saw surprise, and the boy stopped walking to turn to him slowly.  James stopped, too, giving his wings an easy extension and retraction, stretching the muscles like an idle falcon.  When Q looked clearly confused, James took pity and went on in his most logical tone, “If no one ever touches your wings, you’re going to have a devil of a time getting all the down off as it molts.”

As James had suspected, the word ‘molt’ was rather foreign to Q.  While the kid doubtlessly had a love of knowledge, he was perhaps a bit young for in-depth research, even into a topic as pivotal as his own physiology - and even if he’d studied birds a little, it was often difficult to tell how Angels were similar to other flyers and how they were different.  Shedding baby-fluff was a universal fact about having avian wings, however, and Q’s actual feathers were starting to push through all of the fuzz in a way that had to be driving him mad - and making him as cranky as a wetted cat.  Normal humans rarely understood, and now Q looked so shocked at the revelation that he appeared nearly betrayed.  

In fact, his startled ‘Why did no one tell me this?’ look was so heartbreaking that James couldn’t stop himself before he reached out a hand and cupped Q’s head, pulling it in against him.  After only tensing briefly, the boy gave in, tousled hair pressing up against James’s hip.  The different in height between kid-Q and adult-Q was quite vast, but Bond's desire to comfort him was the same, and he massaged with his fingertips gently.  After just a moment of silence, Q pressed his nose a little into the edge of James’s jacket and whined, “They _itch_.”

“I’d bet they do.”

“And they look ugly.”

“No, they don’t.  They look like they need to molt a little more.”

“I _hate_ molting,” Q declared petulantly, and pressed his face as tightly to Bond as he could without breaking his glasses, but still probably bent them a little.  

Unsure whether to sympathise or laugh, because Q in the depths of his melodramatic despair was sadly amusing, James leaned a wing closer until it brushed at one of Q’s downy ones.  The smaller appendage immediately jerked, snapping at him like the swipe of an offended kitten’s paw.  This time, James couldn’t help but chuckle lowly in his throat.  “How about this?  You can investigate my wings, and I’ll let you, just to see what yours will be like after they grow a bit more-”  Only a partial lie; after losing their baby-bird fluff, Q’s wings would still be smaller and rounder-edged for quite a few years, but they’d sport true feathers, at least.  “-And after that, if neither of us are too offended, I’ll help you get some of that itchy down off you.  Is that a good deal?”

James thanked God that he’d learned ages ago that Q responded to logic above all things, because the calm, sensible tone combined with the credible plan had Q turning his head and thinking.  With his right ear pressed to Bond’s side now instead of his whole face, Q gazed forward thoughtfully, before his eyes betrayed him by swiveling back to Bond’s soot-and-smoke feathers.  Lips pursed but curiosity overwhelming him, Q gazed up to meet waiting blue eyes and answered, “That sounds reasonable.”  

When Q still didn’t immediately move, Bond arched a brow, and said with a measured dose of challenge in his voice that he knew drove adult-Q mental, “Well, get on with it then.”

As predicted, Q drew back and puffed up like an offended young starling.  It took him a moment to realize just how widely Bond was grinning at him, pale-blue eyes alight with wicked humor, and the boy literally deflated with a puff of air.  “You’re evil,” he accused.

Still grinning a fox’s sly grin, but admitting that this was probably some of the cleanest humor he’d enjoyed in a good long while, James returned smoothly, “Wherever would you get that idea?”  

Instead of verbally answering, Q narrowed his eyes and strode up to yank on one of Bond’s flight feathers, hard enough that James jumped with an offended, “Ow!”  As he pulled his wing away reflexively, Bond met the five-year-old version of his Quartermaster glare-for-glare, and recalled that Q had always taken challenges head-on and fearlessly.  The only sign that Q was wary of repercussions for his actions was the teeny, tiny spike in his internal energy, that tiny flicker of Angelic power flaring for a second inside his small body.  “Just bloody typical of you…” Bond grumbled under his breath as he pushed aside his temper and also reversed his retreat, rubbing a hand over his face but bravely putting his feathers within Q’s reach again.  

Before Bond had even removed his palm from where it was pressed over his eyes - the Aeon mechanism feeling heavy and tight around his forearm - he felt fingers brushing his feathers, much more gently this time.  Apparently, one burst of violence on Q’s part made them even.  James’s hand had dropped to the level of his mouth and his eyes had opened, but he froze when he looked down, caught by the sight of pure, silent fascination all over Q’s earnest little face.  This was like the beauty of seeing adult-Q deep at work with one of his inventions, or using some of the more exotic Angel skills that he’d developed, but with a level of naivette that was both endearing and strange.  With a jolt, Bond reminded himself that this was Q before anything had happened to him: before he’d grown up and joined MI6, before he’d been trained as an agent and lost his wings during a mission, before he’d faced off against his own 00-agents and Silva by turns, ultimately regaining what he’d lost and then some.  This…  

This Q was the soul of the Q Bond knew, the seed that would grow into the firm oak that was the Quartermaster of MI6.  This fragile little five-year-old knew only what an eye-blink of life had given him, five meagre years of experience.  

For a moment, Bond managed to hold himself still and aloof, but then he couldn’t stop himself from dropping slowly to his haunches - ignoring Q’s befuddled look - and reaching forward to draw Q in tight to him.  As he hugged close the child that would grow into someone very important to him, James buried his head in Q’s shoulder, feeling emotions strong enough to nearly overwhelm even years of harsh MI6 training.  His wings mantled around them, broad and imposing, a protective grey sea that wouldn’t even let the dappled green shadows of the trees pass unchallenged.

“Are you okay?” Q asked, slow and uncertain.  He wriggled a little, but after getting one arm loose, he stopped and stood still again.  Because apparently wings were still the most interesting thing on Q’s list, that hand was immediately put to use petting Bond’s scapulars, which Q could now reach over the larger man’s shoulders, since he was crouched so low.  Bond fought the ridiculous urge to laugh and cry all at once, but regained himself just as the second little hand got loose and starting playing with his coverts.  Fixing a jaunty smile on his face and hiding that he’d just been hit by a simple revelation hard enough to nearly floor him, James lifted his head, meeting a very skeptical hazel gaze.  Bond met it without blinking, and with effort managed to drop his arms so that they fell away from skinny shoulders - one nearly protruding from Q’s oversized jumper - to drape with forced nonchalance over his knees.  

“I’m great, Q.”

~^~

They ended up walking further in until they found a park bench.  It was still early morning, and besides joggers, there was no one around - and those few joggers James heard coming a good ways off, and generally warned away with a glare and a reflexive spreading of storm-cloud wings.  Q, of course, remained blissfully ignorant of the posturing unless James’s feathers moved out of reach, because while James lounged on the bench, Q flitted around in front of him, touching and marveling.  It was not unlike being investigated by a curious bumblebee, but at least there was no feather-pulling.  

James stopped eyeing a passing magpie when he heard Q hum and felt slender fingertips card through the small, dense feathers on the underside of his port wing - just under what would be the elbow on a human arm.  When the agent glanced over, Q had his brows beetled, and he petted the feathers once more before saying, “These are like mine.  Soft.”  

Eyes flicking involuntarily to the mass of budding feathers and shedding fuzz that were Q’s wings, James answered, “Some of the down stays.”  He added with a smirk even as he eased his wing forward so that Q’s fingers sank more deeply in, “But it doesn’t itch.”

At the mention of ‘itch,’ Q made a face again until his nose wrinkled.  He continued to scowl, in fact, until the itchiness became too much to ignore - then he stepped back with an incoherent, shrill snarling noise and beat his wings furiously.  Detached fluff went everywhere while James patiently watched, biting his cheek so as not to laugh at the tiny tantrum.  Q, little hands fisted and more fury on his face than quills on a hedgehog, kept it up until he grew tired - all without seeming to find much relief.

To James’s pleasant surprise, the kid eventually sagged and then walked back over to him.  After a forlorn, puppy-eyed glance at the space on the bench between Bond’s side and his right wing, Q ended up crawling up onto the bench and huddling there with his feet resting on the black-painted metal, toes pressing into James’s hip.  Taking a risk, Bond relaxed his wings from a full to a half spread, and sighed with relief when Q didn’t get testy when a heavier wing settled like a blanket across his back.  Bond’s Q, adult-Q, had been a bit finicky about when and how he liked to be touched by the wings of others - specifically during the time in which he himself was wingless.  The reactions to having a wing slung across his sadly empty back had run from bliss to wrath, depending on whether or not he was tired enough to accept the gesture or stroppy enough to say he didn’t want pity.  

Fortunately, this Q didn’t have all of the agonizing history yet, and he practically purred at the attention.  Adult-Q hadn’t mentioned being neglected as a child, but even if Q’s parents had been the best in the world, they weren’t Angels - weren’t what Q _was_.  They could only feed a part of the hunger in him.  Q was sucking up the attention of another Angel like a desert plant glutting itself on its first rainstorm, and James felt that tightness in his chest again that was as much pleasure as pain.  He let his wing rest a bit more heavily, tucking Q’s messy appendages against his back.  

For a long minute or so, they soaked in the quiet.  James could feel the weight and tightness of the Aeon Mechanism on his forearm, just as he could feel the shape of the stolen one in his pocket, but no threat could have pulled him anywhere right now.  He so rarely got peace… and he so rarely got to talk to a child who expected nothing of him, but who would one day mean the world to him.

“Want me to help you with your molting problem now?” James asked, breaking the silence and also causing half-closed hazel eyes to flutter fully open again.  He immediately received fervent nodding, and Q shuffled like a baby owl on a branch until James finally huffed and turned him bodily until Q was facing away from him.  Curious but hopeful eyes looked over one scrawny shoulder at him, and James felt a very real smile spread reassuringly across his own rugged face.  “You’ve been scratching at them, yes?” he asked, knowing the answer even before Q nodded guiltily.   “That’s good, Q - the reason you’re itching so bloody badly is because of all the down trying to come off, and scratching at it dislodges it.”

Q was already giving in to the urge, fingers running through the narrow barbs that would very soon open up into feathers.  He grimaced and whined, “But it’s not helping!  I still _itch_!”

Smirking, Bond turned his eyes to where Q’s wings exited his shirt, his scapulars and coverts already more grown in than the primaries and secondaries, but still loaded with itching fuzz.  He answered as he dragged curled fingers through the mass of feathers and down, “That’s because you can’t reach everything.”

When Bond had given Q a bit of Angelic affection with a wing across Q’s shoulders, he’d made a very happy noise. Perhaps it wasn’t really a purr, but the noise Q made now damn sure was, as he arched into the ecstatic feeling.  The tiny spark of his Angel energy flared again, and this time so did his feathers, the baby-coverts lifting up like the ruff of fur on an angry dog, although for very different reasons.  Q’s happy noise made Bond incandescently happy in a second, and he continued his work even as Q regained enough focus to continue to scratch what he could reach.

Bond knew from experience that cleaning up a molt wasn’t something done in one sitting, or even one day - Q would be dislodging his old down for quite some time yet, but they could get a good start on it now, and hopefully return Q’s mood to something more lovable and manageable.  

If nothing else, Q seemed to absolutely glow under the attention, and soon he was smiling and stretching out his wings.  They still looked horrifyingly messy compared to James’s sleek appendages, but for the first time, Q seemed to move them as proudly as if they were fully grown in and glossy.  

~^~

As the day ended, Q grew tired, his little body burning through energy like a hot fire.  James ended up carrying him home, smelling of green grass, ice-cream, and the plate of fish-and-chips that they’d shared around lunch-time.  Supper had been lost to sweets, because fuck if James could deny Q’s big eyes when he decided to plead for something.  Ironically, the flavor of ice-cream that Q had chosen reminded James of the tea his Quartermaster favored, albeit much more sugary to match his childhood sweet-tooth.  

Q’s slim arms were around his neck, his legs too short to hook around James’s torso but trying anyway, and his much cleaner wings were tucked up against his back like a feathery carapace.  The ultimate colors were much more apparent: instead of the pale down that all ‘chicks’ like Q had, there were now feathers growing in that would eventually darken to ink-black and lighten to snow-white.  Q would be gorgeous someday, and James had told him so in as many ways as he could without giving too much away.  

“Can we…?”  Q’s sleepy voice was spoken into James’s shirt-collar, and then the side of his throat when the boy turned his head, “C’n we fly back?  Wanna fly…”

It was reflex to lean his cheek against Q’s unkempt head of hair, just as it was reflex to give in to him.  It was probably good that Bond’s natural place in time put him with a Q his own age instead of as a kid, because he’d have spoiled the little fellow rotten.  “We can fly.”  He didn’t bother to give a lecture about falling or holding on, because he planned on doing all the work.  

Humming an appreciative thank you, polite now that he wasn’t a mass of itchy feathers, Q said as James began to seek a good place to lift off, “You’re going to leave after that, aren’t you?”

Sometimes James forgot that Q was perceptive, even at five.  Feeling like he’d just taken a punch to the chest, James rubbed his chin against Q’s curls again.  “For awhile,” he finally managed to rasp, “Not forever.”

“Oh.  Okay.”  Sleepy, wrapped in powerful arms, Q was contented.  James wondered if he’d fully remember this conversation by the time he woke up tomorrow morning.  

Q did wake up a little bit as James crouched and spread his wings to their full extension, testing the air with a few twitches, primaries flared like questing fingers as they stroked the air.  Bond heard Q’s little gasp of wonder in his ear as every muscle bunched and then the wings thundered downwards, whipping the air into a frenzy and also ripping them both free of gravity in an instant.  

All 00-agents learned to treasure the little things in life and hoard them away in their soul, or else they’d soon go mad with all of the things they saw and did.  James had gathered up a whole treasure-chest of memories today, and he gathered a few more before it finally became time to return home: Q hesitantly flapping his small wings once they reached a steady altitude, Q drowsily telling him a story about an old woman who’d babysat him and left him stuck in a closet by accident once - a story that was mostly funny became James had already heard it, proving that this was a ridiculous memory that would stick with Q for years to come.  The best memory by far, however, was after Q’s story had petered off and they were now walking through Q’s house.  MI6 may have been confused about who James was, but they’d done their job, and there wasn’t a single sign that James had killed a woman in the hallway - and to be fair, he didn’t even care, because Q had fallen asleep on his shoulder, snoring in soft wuffles into his jacket.  When James went to put him to bed (finding Q’s room easily, identifiable by its small bed and plethora of half-built projects already far beyond his age), the boy made a little disgruntled noise and grabbed at his ear.  A bit of gentle disentangling later and James managed to gently lower the boy, and stayed leaned over him for a moment, wings spread out in an instinctual gesture of protectiveness to create a living canopy over Q’s bed.  

With one hand braced on the bed, James reached out the other to pluck Q’s glasses off, and shortsighted hazel eyes blinked open again.  Q lifted one delicate hand until he could brush against the softer underside of James’s nearest wing one last time.  His mumble was nearly unintelligible, but Bond was more than used to deciphering ‘sleepy Q speech’: “I like sleeping with storms… and these looks like storm clouds.  I like them.”  Looking from where he was petting to meet James’s eyes, Q asked with guileless curiosity and a bit of hope, “Will mine look like this?  Please?”

Bond smiled even as he blinked back a heat from his eyes, denying how easily Q could bring out emotions in him at this age.  It was flattering to think that Q thought he could control things like genetically hereditary wing-color.  Brushing Q’s hair back from his face, James brushed a cat’s-paw-light kiss to Q’s forehead as he assured, “Yours will be even more handsome.  Trust me.”

“Okay,” was the last thing Q mumbled before dropping his arm and apparently giving up the fight against sleep all in an instant.  How quickly children could fall asleep…

~^~

The return journey through time was about as atrociously terrible as the first trip.  This time James stumbled and fell to his hands and knees, vomiting possibly worse than before and seeing nothing but blacks spots across his spinning vision.  Fortunately, his ears worked fine, so he heard the familiar voice of Q - his Q, Quartermaster of MI6 and lover of a particularly vexsome and brash 00-agent named James - shouting frantically at him before hands touched his body.  The Aeon Mechanism was unbuckled from his forearm and removed, but James kept hacking and coughing until hands - Q’s hands - roughly grabbed his face, and he heard the Quartermaster say in a voice that wavered on the air but was as familiar as a mouthful of his favorite wine: “James. Listen.   _Relax_.”

Three words to bind a person.  That was what Silva had taught Q, but also what Q had surpassed him in before the ultimate showdown that had put an end to the psychopath.  Even knowing that Q had the ability to get into someone’s head with little more than a bit of eye-contact and a touch (and sometimes without either), James’s eyes were opening and focusing on Q’s by the first word, and he could _feel_ the rush of energy that slipped from Q’s fingers through his skin and bones.  Without his brain ever giving the order, he felt his muscles relax, and by the time Q’s mouth moved next, the world was going gently black…

~^~

James woke up an interminable time later stripped down to his pants and lying in a bed in Medical, heart-rate monitor beeping and his wings feeling cramped and stiff both under and alongside him.  Angels were not made to sleep on their backs, and even MI6-grade hospital beds were not made to contain such broad appendages.  Grimacing, 007 lifted the hand that didn’t have an IV in it to pinch the bridge of his nose, where a headache lurked.  

“All things considered,” Q’s voice startled him, “it could have been worse.”  The Quartermaster was sitting in a chair next to his bed, and appeared to have been there awhile - despite his posh exterior, his eyes looked strained and tired, and the tendons of his hands stood out in a way that said he was fighting to hold them still.  He looked so like the Q that James had spent the day with and yet so different that James felt the tightening in his chest again, and the vertigo he felt had less to do with dizziness and more to do with his perception struggling to cope with this face he now knew in two forms.  Seeing James closing his eyes again uncomfortably, the Quartermaster got up (one full-sized wing nearly knocking over his chair) and hurried to his side.  

“I’m not going to ask if your mission was a success, considering that I’m still here and remember everything,” Q said, speaking a hair too fast to sound completely calm, “Of course, I’d hardly remember if you managed to shift the entire timeline.  You’re on an IV drip and staying here for observation for at least twenty-four more hours as a precaution, because we don’t exactly have much data on the repercussions of time-travel.”

“I’m fine,” James grunted on reflex.  

“You came in like a train-wreck.  Your wings, at least, were working well enough that you nearly took out three people,” Q corrected him with gentle resignation in his exhausted tone.  When Bond opened his eyes, however, a tiny smirk was hovering on the edge of Q’s mouth.  “Do you recall that I put you out?”

Reflecting, James nodded after a beat.  

Nodding back in encouragement, Q prompted, “What else do you remember?”

It was possibly whatever they’d put in his IV to stabilize him after his second journey through time, but James couldn’t seem to stop the answer that fell from his lips, “That you like to go to sleep to the sound of storms.”

Q’s eyes widened and he seemed to somehow stumble without even walking.  His wings - glorious and black for their first three-fourths, white as bone for the last - snapped out in an involuntary show of shock that he’d possibly never re-learn how to hide.  All the Quartermaster said, however, was, “Shit.”  Then, after at least another full minute of just holding himself up against the edge of the bed, he reached forward again and gripped James by his ears, demanding fervently and with a touch of rather amusing hysteria, “What the _devil_ did you do, James Herbert Bond?”

Purely because he was probably drugged (and because it seemed that everything was still all right with his world), James grinned and said enigmatically, “I kept a baby bird from jumping out a window.”

~^~

It turned out that, somehow, James hadn’t destroyed the entire space-time-continuum - or whatever Q and his minions kept babbling on about.  James would have been the only one to notice any changes, theoretically, but no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find any.  Everyone was honestly flabbergasted by that, especially when James revealed the full width and breadth of his transgressions, which amounted to an entire day of stolen time with his five-year-old Quartermaster.  He’d waited until the official meeting to announce that, making Q himself wait on pins and needles, but when James had admitted to everything… Q had gone very still.  

Not until that night did they talk about it.  They were both curled up on Bond’s bed, James retracting his earlier thought about Angels never enjoying prolonged time on their back - it wasn’t so bad with Q stretched naked across his torso.  James’s own wings were spread to their full extension, arching off even the king-sized bed that he’d splurged on along with his opulent bathroom arrangements.  Q, quiet and reserved all evening, had his own wings folded loosely behind his shoulders and the fingers of one hand drawing idle, ticklish patterns on Bond’s ribs.  

His eyes (sans glasses) were staring towards the open window, where a storm was letting loose a steady cascade of rain from soot-bellied clouds.

“I remember,” Q said, the words so sudden in the silence that Bond twitched.  Feathers rustling, he eyed Q in confusion, but the other man just kept gazing off towards the rain making waterfalls on the glass.  Even if he didn’t turn, he eventually did speak, however, “Maybe I’ve always remembered, or maybe this is all your fault… but I remember a tall blond stranger dropping in on me one day.  It’s like something I forgot, but you made me remember.”

Stomach doing an unexpected flip, James shifted, muscles flexing as if he sensed danger in this admission - or something far beyond his ken.  “What are you talking about?”

“You bloody know what,” Q huffed at him but finally turned his head.  He didn’t look mad… not exactly.  He looked flustered, frustrated, and at the same time grudgingly amazed, and searched James’s face as if it held answers.  “He was an Angel like me, but with wings the color of storms and a rumble in his voice.”

Bond very rarely blushed, but then again, people this important to him rarely looked at him with such intensity.  Feeling a bit of heat crawling up his neck, James cleared his throat and glanced away, noticing the rain and wondering how he’d never known that Q loved it before - he definitely loved to get his wings wet, even though they took ages to dry.  

Unexpectedly… Q relaxed.  He’d tensed a bit as he’d talked, but now he leaned down and tucked his head under Bond’s chin, feeling so much like he had as a child that James made a torn sound in his throat.  It hurt, remembering that, but at the same time it felt so good that he could only clutch the pain tighter.  He did the same physically, wrapping his arms around Q’s lithe torso and constricting with all his strength, just to feel Q’s breath puff out against the hollow of his throat.

“You said that you weren’t leaving forever,” Q said.  His starboard wing extended (not trapped beneath Bond’s brawny arms), and the white primaries stroked ever-so-lightly down the underside of Bond’s wing - a vulnerable pose, and James shivered.  “You’re a magnificent liar and I commend you for that… but you told the truth that time, and I didn’t even realize how rare a gift that was back then,” Q finished in a quiet voice.  

Finally releasing his crushing embrace, James folding his wings up, and Q was gracious enough to allow his uncooperative wings to go loose so that they could be bundled up within the grey feathers.  As for the rest of Q, James cupped his chin and drew him up so that he wasn’t hiding out of sight anymore, and stared into hazel eyes that had aged but hadn’t changed.  “Now you know,” was all James rumbled, before pulling Q in for a kiss, sealing his words up between them like a gift passed from tongue to tongue.  Q pressed back fervently into the kiss as if never wanting to let that gift go.  

 

 

 

Feather references

 

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who's curious, Bond's middle name actually _is_ Herbert, according to [this](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3634372/Way-of-the-world.html). 
> 
> Time to give credit where it's due: _"I guess that I’d rather go with a kidnapper with wings than a nanny without them.”_ This adorable line not only sums up Q's ineffable and sudden trust of Bond, but is a line that I magpied entirely from the Great and Powerful [MinMu](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MinMu/pseuds/MinMu) All of my cutest lines seem to come from her ;) Also many thanks to [Alex_kade](http://archiveofourown.org/users/alex_kade/pseuds/alex_kade), who has been playing in this AU and who made up the newest 008! She was kind enough to let me play with him in turn. 
> 
> Many thanks to [Springbok7](http://archiveofourown.org/users/springbok7/pseuds/springbok7) for some speedy editing. I hope that everyone realizes how hard it is to keep me corralled even with a team of betas, because my natural instincts is to run off on my own and post willy-nilly. This is the equivalent of a small child who thinks it's a good idea to run outside naked. Thank the betas.


End file.
